Serge Fradkoff receives us in the living room of his apartment in the Champel district of Geneva, which looks like a private mansion. In his armchair, the master of the place launches into the story of his life, or his thousand lives, one should say. An existence made up of extraordinary encounters with the greats of this world, as he likes to say, whether they be crowned heads, heads of state, like the shah of iranby Ferdinand and Imelda Marcosfrom the Ivorian Felix Houphouet-Boigny or industrialists such as the Agnelli or Olivetti family.
This Franco-Russian, born in Tunisia, has lit up the eyes and turned the heads of hundreds of women. Not by his talents as a don juan – he has been married to his current wife since 1976, an instant love at first sight he still marvels at today – but as a diamond dealer.
Bridge and social dinners
However, nothing predestined this son of a dentist of Russian origin, who made a career and raised his children in Tunisia, to become the right arm of Harry Winston, nicknamed “the Napoleon of precious stones”. Bridge will play a decisive role in the encounters that will lead him to this brilliant career.
“At 16, I played poker with notables. I was extremely talented, but I quit overnight so as not to turn bad. In a café in Tunis, I started following a pair who practiced bridge and got hooked on the game. He wins the Tunisian championship in pairs. Sent by his father to Geneva after his baccalaureate, in order to get to know his Swiss family before entering university in Paris, he finally settled there. “A cousin advised me to study business there, and I listened to him.”
After obtaining his diploma, during a game of bridge, he met Jacques Timey, spawn of the Harry Winston house. On a bluff, he offers her his services. This is how he entered the fascinating world of diamonds, to which he knew nothing, but in which he very quickly made a name for himself.
After a few months of training in Geneva, he joined the parent company in New York where he spent a year. Back in the City of Calvin, he quickly took control of the firm’s operations worldwide, with the exception of North America. Serge Fradkoff naturally possesses the qualities required to make an excellent diamond dealer: presence of mind, intuition, instinct, empathy. “I was Harry Winston’s closest associate and the biggest seller of rough diamonds in the world. I was buying 40 to 50 million dollars worth of stones a year.”
Inexhaustible, the diamond dealer backs up his story with anecdotes and photos. He held in his hands the most extraordinary and rarest stones on the planet, including his favourite, the Dona Vivid Pink, a pink diamond weighing 18.18 carats whose current value is around 50 million francs. When he talks about Harry Winston, it’s always with a touch of perceptible emotion in his voice. This spiritual father, who died in 1978, wanted to make him the global managing director of his empire. One of his sons wanted otherwise and struggled to push this competitor in his father’s heart to the exit barely two years after his death.
We are then in 1980, and Serge Fradkoff decides to found his own company in Geneva – Serge Fradkoff SA Precious Stones – specializing in the trading of high quality gems. In 2000, gathering a group of investors around him, he tried to buy the Harry Winston house, but failed for legal issues.
Cinema, banks and horses
If diamonds occupy a special place in his life, the adopted Genevan, who now lives part of the year in Paris, is a jack-of-all-trades. In 1975, he notably tried his hand at cinema, producing Arresta film which won the Golden Dove Award (Grand Prix of the Festival of the Americas) in 1977 and whose main actor was Bernard Le Coq.
From 1976 to 1996, Serge Fradkoff was one of the main shareholders ofUnigestion, a Geneva private bank in which he held 33% of the capital. In 1988, he negotiated on his own the purchase by Unigestion of a majority stake in the fourth largest Swiss bank. Banca della Svizzera italianasold a few years later to the Swiss Bank Corporation.
The one who was at all social diners also owned a stable of racehorses in the 1970s and 1980s and notably raised thoroughbreds.
Undecided to stop, Serge Fradkoff, in addition to his trading in gems, is still the majority shareholder and chairman of the board of directors of Active-Advisors SA, a Swiss financial company specializing in alternative investments. “I’m still very active,” admits the man of a thousand lives and a formidable memory.
Profile
1956 Decision to pursue higher education in Switzerland.
1960 Joined the Harry Winston Society.
1964 Birth of her first child. There will be four in all, the last born in 1983.
1979 Officially leaves the Harry Winston Company.
1982 One of his mounts, Perrault, was voted horse of the year on grass tracks and second best horse of the year on sand tracks, in the United States.
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